SHANE McGRATH: Rumours of player unhappiness and baseless pub talk… inside the last few weeks of Pádraic Joyce’s Galway reign and why he took so long to pull the plug…and who will replace him out West

PÁDRAIC JOYCE illuminated football fields in his glittering playing career, and he then took Galway to two All-Ireland finals as a manager, but it might pain him to consider that his most memorable impacts in the latter role came with what he said off the field rather than what he inspired on it.

That might seem an unduly harsh assessment of a man who brought Galway back to the All-Ireland final in 2022 after a 21-year wait. There they played brilliantly against a Kerry team inspired by David Clifford that eventually fell over the line.

Two years later Joyce brought them back to the biggest show in Irish sport, and with Armagh as opposition Galway looked placed to win the Sam Maguire for the first time in 23 years.

Instead, they didn’t show up and lost an uninspired match that came to be seen as the last croak of handbrake football.

Joyce also won four consecutive Connacht titles, between 2022 and 2025, moving the county decisively clear of a floundering Mayo.

Yet it’s what he said rather than what he did that endures. When he was appointed manager in the winter of 2019, he told Galway Bay FM that ‘our aim is to win another All-Ireland, simple as that’.

Anything else, he said, would be seen ‘as an underachievement’.

To his credit, he never resiled from that target, but his difficulty was that, the longer his reign went on, the further that dream receded.

The closest they came was that taut 2022 decider, and his comments afterwards were understandably raw. He was especially exercised by the decision to award a free to Kerry in the 67th minute when the teams were level.

It was converted by David Clifford and from there Kerry kicked for home. ‘I couldn’t get over it,’ said Joyce of the decision, and his hurt was palpable.

It was even more obvious two years later following Galway’s no-show in the final against Armagh.

Reflecting on the defeat three months later, Joyce described his pain in characteristically vivid terms.

‘I still have nightmares about it,’ he said. ‘I said to the boys afterwards, we’ll regret it probably until we take our last breaths.’

Just as he was able to summon scores that few of his contemporaries could, Joyce is also adept at producing vivid lines when interviewed.

A clever man, he spoke quickly but never seemed rushed; he never sounded like a man saying something he didn’t want said.

So, when he spoke after the defeat to Dublin in June about what might come next, it was worth paying attention.

‘I’ve seven years done here now; I’ve two more to do. Galway’s getting there,’ he said then.

Managers invariably deflect when their future is broached after a season-ending defeat, but Joyce’s mention of two more years suggested he was committed to seeing out the extension to his term he was handed 12 months ago. 

He came within minutes of a fifth consecutive Connacht title this season, and even defeat to Roscommon in a breathless provincial decider didn’t damage their standing as one of the leaders of the pack chasing Kerry as thoughts turned to the All-Ireland series.

A routine win against Kildare was followed by a three-point defeat of a Westmeath team still buoyant after the Leinster final, and when Galway led Dublin by six points with 13 minutes remaining, their place in the semi-final looked probable.

A 10-point turnaround ensued, and Galway’s collapse in the closing stages betrayed structural weaknesses that had been apparent and insufficiently addressed.

Joyce was back in Croke Park last July, as part of the jubilee team, and watched Galway’s fiercest rivals end their 75-year wait for the All-Ireland, sparking celebrations that became a global story.

It’s not been an easy few weeks for those of a Galway footballing persuasion.

The week of the All-Ireland final saw Galway thick with rumours of player unhappiness. There was gossip about a squad survey that exposed big issues, and inevitable speculation about change at the top followed. This was, as far as we can discern, baseless pub talk.

It’s understood that the debriefs now routinely carried out in inter-county set-ups took place, but the fact that Joyce didn’t announce his departure for four weeks after that process suggests he had the support of the majority of his playing squad.

Much less clear is the situation with his backroom team. ‘Sources’ close to the manager were quick to counter a claim made on Thursday that he left after struggling to put together a backroom team.

But, while it’s understood there was no significant opposition at county board level to Joyce continuing, there was an appetite for changes to his coaching team. Selectors John Concannon and Micheál Ó Domhnaill were with Joyce from the start of his tenure but, as is the modern way, he cycled through a number of coaches.

Cian O’Neill was the most notable, serving three years from 2022 to 2024 – which included Galway’s two trips to the All-Ireland final.

That was hardly coincidental, and his departure after the 2024 decider was a setback from which Joyce’s management didn’t recover.

Former Cavan manager Mickey Graham was a surprising addition last season, and he was in place for the 2026 campaign, too, along with former Cavan goalkeeper Raymond Galligan.

Joyce was a hands-on coach in his own right, but his willingness to take on other ideas could be seen in his decision to bring Jim McGuinness in to oversee a training session in 2020.

The pair have a long relationship going back to successful Sigerson Cup teams in Tralee IT in the 1990s, and it was seen at the time as clever management by Joyce as he got to grips with the inter-county game.

But as big a loss as O’Neill was, Galway’s struggles to adapt to the radical changes in football last year proved fateful.

From the outside, a consensus built that no team would be better suited to the new game. 

They had excellent inside defenders, ideal for the three-up attacking threat. They had incomparable riches around the middle third, with high fielders and powerful ball carriers between numbers five and 12.

And their full forward line looked a match for anything in the game, with perhaps the exception of Kerry. But reality never aligned with those expectations.

Last season saw Galway pitched into a series of wildly unpredictable championship matches, with their three round-robin fixtures bringing a shock home defeat to Dublin, a chaotic draw against Derry and a last-gasp win against Armagh.

There followed a preliminary quarter-final to Down they almost lost, before Meath stunned them in the last eight.

There were two recurring features of these games, and they leached into the campaign just finished. 

One was uncertainty at goalkeeper, and the other was the ongoing failure to control matches.

The latter is a devilish challenge for even the best teams with the way the game is played now, but Galway too often looked a side with no plan for taking the sting out of a game.

Worse was the failure to react to circumstances in a match, which cost them against Roscommon in the Connacht final but also most fatefully against Dublin.

The point about goalkeeper is one that became a touchy one, but the rotation of Connor Gleeson and Conor Flaherty didn’t make the team stable.

Flaherty started the first two games of this year’s championship before Gleeson came in for the first match of their All-Ireland series against Kildare, keeping his place thereafter.

Last season, in eight championship matches, Galway changed between Flaherty and Gleeson four times.

Settling on a No1 is just the first of the new man’s tasks.

Paul Conroy was coaxed back by Joyce for one last tilt at the All-Ireland, but he was 37 in May and owes nothing to the Galway shirt.

Shane Walsh was 33 in June and, if there’s no suggestion that he is done at this level, he is in the twilight of his career, as is Damien Comer, who will be 33 in January.

Liam Silke is 31, and Kieran Molloy turned 30 earlier this year.

This generation of footballers aren’t done yet, but the new man on their sideline will understand that winning an All-Ireland has to be a short-term project.

Sean Kelly is still just 29 and should be the team’s heartbeat, given his quality and leadership, but injury has stalked him.

A fit Kelly, along with John Maher, Cein Darcy, Rob Finnerty, Cillian McDaid and Matthew Thompson, provide a high-quality core, and there will be ambitious coaches convinced they can wring enough out of them to make Galway real contenders in 2027.

Kevin Walsh has been mooted for a return. Kevin Johnson, successful on the Connacht club scene, as well as manager of the Galway Under 20 side this season, will appeal, too, while the usual outside names have been linked.

Jim Gavin seems like a moonshot, but Mark McHugh is intriguing. His dedication to Westmeath in his first season as manager was absolute, however, and it yielded a precious Leinster title.

That the Galway board are starting their search in September isn’t ideal, and reflective itself of an executive that seemed happy with Joyce staying on. Now one of the great figures in their football history has decided otherwise.

He was convinced that there was an All-Ireland in this group, and that he could lead them there.

His disappointment will be profound. The depth of Galway’s ambition is what intrigues now.

NAMES ON THE GRAPEVINE 

Mark McHugh

IT should be said that there’s nothing to indicate the Donegal All-Ireland winner is thinking of leaving Westmeath, where he worked wonders in his first season as an inter-county manager, with a Leinster title.

Given how the team acquitted themselves in the All-Ireland series, and all while dealing with significant injuries, he may well be convinced there is more in this group.

Yet, if the chance to manage one of the game’s heavyweight teams came along, it would likely test the resolve of any ambitious manager. McHugh also knows Galway football through his past involvement with Moycullen, which is significant.

Kevin Johnson

JOHNSON has proven himself the old-school way, through sustained success at club level.

He won back-to-back Galway titles with Corofin, having done likewise with Ballintubber in Mayo, and he also won the Sligo championship with Tourlestrane.

Johnson managed the Galway Under 20 team this year and if the board elect to go for a manager who has come up through the grassroots and who understands the game in Galway, then Johnson’s case is a compelling one.

Prior to managing Corofin, he had coached Salthill-Knocknacarra and Mountbellew-Moylough, and he works as a secondary schoolteacher in Salthill.

He would appeal to those who believe Galway need to go back to the grassroots.

Kevin Walsh

GIVEN how embattled he often seemed in his five years managing the county, it’s easy to forget that Kevin Walsh won two Connacht titles in that spell, in 2016 and 2018.

Those years are notable because that was the period when Mayo were regularly contesting All-Ireland finals and setting national standards that Galway seemed way off.

But Walsh was a tireless renovator of the county team’s standards and ambitions, and it’s only in recent years that the job he did has been appreciated.

Since then, he’s been part of John Cleary’s management in Cork, and it’s hard to imagine Walsh relishing a role front of house again.

But he’s a Galway native operating near the elite end of the game… they wouldn’t, would they?

An outside Joyce?

THE LATE great John O’Mahony famously inspired Galway to two All-Ireland titles after leading his native Mayo to a decider.

Peter Forde is another Mayoman to have managed their fierce neighbours, but the appetite for another raid across the border isn’t vast this time. 

Stephen Rochford worked wonders with Corofin, and James Horan is currently involved with Moycullen, but in this year of all years, Galway football turning to a Mayoman for salvation could prove a tricky sell.